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Rest of the weeks theatre

Talking to TerroristsOxford Playhouse In the theatre, questions are usually more important than answers. Robin Soans’s documentary play puts its toe in dangerous waters. The unnamed characters, some easily identified, include Belfast terrorists, British cabinet ministers, famous hostages, ambassadors, rebels in Uganda and Iraq, jihadists, terror victims, torture victims, bystanders. Sometimes the focus changes too quickly or too often, which makes the text sound too fragmented, but Soans’s argument still emerges crystal-clear. Torturers and terrorists are made, not born.

It is cruelty and oppression that makes them what they are. You can and should talk to them, liberate their minds from what the world has done to them. Only a thoughtful, generous, idealistic Englishman could have come up with such a gospel. The fact is that you can’t talk to terrorists, except if and when they think that terror isn’t getting them anywhere. There are people in whom cruelty